Online reputation management in Tourism (ORM) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Online reputation management in Tourism (ORM)

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The reputation is very important for businesses and destinations. A change in rating has an impact on occupancy (around 7 % per one point of 5), average daily rate (up to 11 % per one point) and revenues of the hotels or restaurants (Viglia, G., Minazzi, R. and Buhalis, D. (2016). However, the syllabuses of hotel management courses, marketing courses etc. are usually not adapted to cover this topic with enough lessons, details and practical knowledge. The new syllabus created in this project should fill the gaps in education and offer new perspectives. Not only reviews and ratings are part of the reputation. Mentions, comments and influencers are another part of the reputation. Managing it requires the know-how of modern applications for monitoring, social listening etc.

The main objective of the project is to create a syllabus and teaching materials for a new course that will enable to teach the topic of online reputation management (ORM) systematically, based on real data and experience. The overall strategy of the project is to develop a sustainable training product for the enhancement of the skills and competencies for future managers and tourism workers. The main outcome of the ORM project will be a syllabus of a new course with highly important and demanded knowledge. The outcomes will include:
– syllabus, – presentations, – textual support for teachers, case studies, best practices (e-books), – experimental online module.

The target groups are mainly (1) students of tourism and hospitality programs, (2) academicians and teachers of hospitality and hotel management, tourism/online marketing. (3) managers and practitioners. Besides these three main target groups, there are other subjects potentially involved in the project – tourism managers as consultants, national associations as partners for dissemination, student communities interested in the theme etc. During the project realization, it is expected to reach 100 students, 40 academicians at the consortium universities, other 800 thanks to the local and international conferences and about 800 practitioners at the conferences + other thousands through the published research results in specialized journals for professionals and other dissemination events. After the project completion, it is expected that 750 students will go through the created courses at the partner universities during the next five years and another 700 students will be fully or partially aware of ORM at other universities thanks to the inspiration with the syllabus.

Activities leading the successful realization of the project and reaching the goals are divided into six work packages.
WP0. Management and administration of the project – will contribute to the flawless progress of the project.
WP2. Realization of the researches – to be able to teach relevant information and strategies, it is necessary to gain the data and have an overview of what is going on on the market, what are the motivations of the writers, how the content of reviews influences the decision-making process etc. This WP will lead to the creation of the content of the presentations, e-book and e-learning module.
WP3. Preparation of the syllabus, teaching materials and online module – after collecting all the relevant data, the teaching materials themselves must be prepared. With this WP, the syllabus will be prepared and the teaching materials will be created. The layouts, design, chapters, online platforms etc. will be decided and created. This WP will lead to the most visible results of the project for the end-user.
WP4. Dissemination and WP5. Evaluation and control – will increase the awareness of the Erasmus+ program, project and ORM itself and will ensure flawless carrying out the project.

To prepare the course, it is necessary to conduct research in ORM and related fields. Three groups of research subjects are involved in ORM – future customers (readers of reviews), customers (writers of the reviews and ratings) and tourism businesses (companies, destinations, sightseeing etc). These groups have different motivations, needs and expectations in regards to online reputation. To create an effective strategy for ORM, it is necessary to know the motives, factors and consequences. The first will be desk research – a literature review, then qualitative and quantitative methods will be used, including questionnaires, web scraping and in-depth interviews.

The results of the project besides the syllabus will be an increased cooperation and knowledge flow between the universities, increase the cooperation between the academic and business sector, increase in internationalization – teacher and students, increase in competences and qualification of the participating academicians, increased attractivity of the study programs etc.

The potential long term benefit is an increase in the competitiveness of tourism destinations and businesses through better service quality.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 268730 Eur

Project Coordinator

VYSOKA SKOLA EKONOMICKA V PRAZE & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI
• KAAKKOIS-SUOMEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE